


only fools fall for you

by heklin



Series: time travel series [1]
Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst, Jared has two moms, M/M, Suicide Attempt, Time Travel, and a cat named angel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-04-04 08:32:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14016348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heklin/pseuds/heklin
Summary: Jared keeps getting sent back in time to the day of Evan's suicide attempt.





	only fools fall for you

Jared wakes up on the first day of senior year with a killer headache.

He reaches blindly for his phone, hits snooze on the alarm, and tries to go back to sleep.

When it goes off again ten minutes later, he almost chucks the phone across the room. Before he can do that, though, his mom walks in.

“First day, Jared!" Joan says. "Up and at ‘em.”

He groans and throws an arm over his face.

“I made french toast. Get ready and come downstairs before it gets cold.”

He waits a few moments until he’s sure she’s gone, and then kicks off the covers. He puts his glasses on and gets out of bed, unplugging his phone from where it sits on his bedside table and taking it with him to the bathroom.

He checks Twitter on the toilet, and Instagram as he brushes his teeth. People are already posting about how much they miss summer. Sabrina Patel posted a photo last night of her friends sitting around a bonfire, with the caption “Here’s to memories we’ll never forget! Now let’s kick senior year’s ass!!!”

Jared hates high school. He spits a mouthful of toothpaste into the sink.

At least it’s his last year of this bullshit.

He gets dressed. Grabs his backpack and headphones. Goes downstairs. He’s hungry, he thinks for a second, except no, that’s just the feeling of utter dread curling in the pit of his stomach. That feeling that comes with every first day of school.

Angel, his cat, circles his feet, meowing loudly. He picks her up and brings her into the kitchen, scratching her behind the ears absentmindedly. His moms are seated at the table, and there’s a plate of french toast set aside for him. It’s already gotten kind of cold, so he sets Angel down on the floor and eats fast without sitting, then chugs his lukewarm coffee and burps loudly. Joan makes a face at him and says, “Jared.”

His other mom, Liz, looks up from her phone and makes eye contact with him as she lets out an even louder burp.

“Oh my god,” Joan says, standing up. She takes their empty plates to the sink. “I live with two slobs.”

Jared grins.

Liz gets up as well, grabbing her handbag and keys. “Ready to go, kiddo?”

“I’m almost eighteen,” he protests, following her to the front door. “You can’t call me that anymore.”

“Wait, wait!” Joan comes rushing out of the kitchen, hands on her hips. “No goodbye kiss?”

Liz smiles and leans in to kiss her, and Jared covers his eyes and says, “Gross.”

They break apart after a moment. “You too, _kiddo,_ come on,” Joan says, and then, before he can make a run for it, he’s getting pulled into a group hug.

“Ugh,” he says, but he lets himself be sandwiched between the two of them, like they used to do all the time when he was much younger. His head still hurts, but other than that, the bad feelings subside a little. He loves his parents (though he'd never say it to anyone but them).

Liz drives him to school. (Joan’s car is having problems, so she’s been taking Jared’s to work until they get it fixed.) She gets kind of emotional when she stops the car outside the entrance, tearing up a little.

“Mom,” he says, exasperated.

“What?” she says, wiping her eyes with a laugh. “This is your last year of high school! After this, you’re gonna be an _adult._ ” She stage-whispers the last word, and he gives a little laugh despite the fact that his headache has somehow gotten worse since she started talking.

“Don’t remind me, please,” he says, and gets out of the car.

He waits for the briefest of seconds outside the front doors, then squares his shoulders and walks in.

He spots Evan quickly. He always does. He can pick him out of a crowd in seconds.

(He tries not to think about that too much.)

The taller boy is standing in front of his locker, talking to Alana Beck. Or rather, Alana Beck is talking to him. Talking _at_ him. Jared’s had his fair share of conversations with her—okay, only two, but that’s more than enough for him—and that’s usually how it goes. Evan’s hunched over like he always is, nodding along to whatever she’s saying. He’s wearing khakis and a striped polo, a typical outfit for him. Jared’s always thought that Evan dresses kind of like a cartoon character. He imagines his closet to be rows and rows of variations of the same three blue shirts, and like ten pairs of the same khakis. Maybe a single pair of jeans.

There’s a cast on his arm.

Jared frowns slightly when he notices it. Evan's gesturing towards his arm, saying something, and then Alana cuts him off and he freezes, eyes going wide at whatever she tells him. Jared starts to make his way over just as she’s leaving, throwing a “Happy first day” over her shoulder as she power walks away, a flurry of motion with a stack of textbooks and a pink backpack.

The words come out of his mouth before he’s even thought of them. Then again, that’s how it always seems to happen when he’s around Evan. He just speaks, doesn’t ever think. “Is it weird to be the first person in history to break their arm from jerking off too much, or would you consider that an honor?”

 _God, you haven’t seen him all summer and_ that’s _the first thing you choose to say to him?_

Evan’s moving closer, waving his good arm, almost frantic, and Jared’s chest tightens a little at his sudden proximity. Evan looks around them as if to make sure no one’s listening. “That’s not—I mean I wasn’t—I wasn’t...doing that.”

This is a game that Jared enjoys too much. It almost makes having to be at school at seven in the morning worth it. “Paint me the picture,” he says, any feelings of self-hatred passing, for the most part, as he watches Evan's face go from fear to embarrassment. He shoves a hand in his pocket. “You’re in your bedroom, you’ve got Zoe Murphy’s Instagram pulled up on your weird, off-brand cell phone—”

“Shut up,” Evan hisses, looking behind him, and Jared raises his eyebrows. When Evan faces him again, his eyes are squeezed shut for a second, and he gestures wildly. “That’s not what I was doing, obviously, I don’t even like her like that anymore, you know that, I was just—I was climbing a tree, and I fell.”

He’s rubbing the back of his neck and staring down at the floor. Jared’s head throbs, and a laugh bubbles out of him, sudden and mean. “You fell out of a _tree_? What are you, like, an acorn?”

It’s definitely not the best thing he could have come up with, but. It’s there. It hangs in the air between them, unfortunate, kind of like a bad smell.

Evan seems to shrink even further into himself, somehow. “Well, I don’t know if you know this, but I worked this summer as an apprentice park ranger?” Jared does know this. He spent a worrying amount of time over the summer checking Evan’s Instagram for new photos of trees and other park-related shit. Evan would caption them with cheesy puns or sometimes just strings of seemingly random emojis, which Jared spent even _more_ time trying to decipher, as if maybe there was a pattern to them, maybe they had some hidden meaning when put together like that. “Um, at Ellison State Park? I’m sort of a tree expert now, I mean, not to—brag, or uh—”

Jared can’t bring himself to make fun of him for that because Evan’s shaking his head with that awkward sort of smile, and so he just stands there, gripping the straps of his backpack for dear life, nodding and smiling along for him to continue.

“So anyway, um, I tried to climb this forty foot tall oak tree—”

“And then you _fell._ ”

“Well it’s actually—it’s a funny story though because there was a solid ten minutes after I fell where I just lay there, um, on the ground, waiting for someone to get me. I was just like, ‘any second now,’” He looks back at Jared, painfully earnest, and Jared’s reminded of him when they were kids, telling him some story, eyes wide, looking back in that same way. “I was saying to myself, ‘any second now,’ you know, ‘here they come…’”

Jared feels a weird tug in his chest. “Did they?” he asks.

“No, nobody came, that’s the—um, that’s what’s funny,” Evan finishes lamely.

“Jesus Christ,” Jared says, laughing uncomfortably, because what the hell else is he supposed to do or say in response to that?

“How was—what did you do for the—” Evan pauses and looks down at his shoes, and his voice is small when he asks, “You had a good summer?”

Jared already has his answer prepared. He rehearsed it last night, which is stupid, but whatever, it’s between him and the four walls of his bedroom. And Angel, who was there as well, watching him from her favorite spot on top of the bookshelf. “Well,” he starts, and his head throbs so violently he has to grit his teeth against the pain, and then everything goes black.

 

-

 

When he comes to, he’s in a forest, standing still, and he looks down at himself to see that he’s in the same outfit that he put on this morning—jeans and his favorite T-shirt. He spins around, taking in his surroundings. Trees everywhere, and there’s a trail a few feet to his right, barely visible, leading deeper into the woods. It’s sometime in the late afternoon, judging by the way the sunlight filters through the trees, and it’s hot. Like, unbelievably hot. Why is he wearing jeans and not shorts? Better yet, what is he _doing_ here? Where even is he?

Is it after school already? He can’t remember anything after his conversation with Evan. Did he black out and leave the building, and then just wander around for hours until he got lost in the middle of some random ass forest?

Except he doesn’t have his backpack on him. Or, he realizes after checking his pockets, his phone. Which is extremely convenient.

So either he lost his belongings on his way, and is possibly suffering from memory loss, _or_ he passed out earlier and is now just stuck in some weird dream or coma or something.

He snorts to himself when he thinks of how Evan must have reacted to him collapsing in the hallway, mid-sentence—if that is what happened. He should probably be panicking right now, but before he can start doing that, he hears a rustling sound somewhere behind him.

He ducks behind a tree immediately, crouching down, because he may not know what the fuck is going on, but he is _not_ about to get killed by a wild animal or something. He peers around the trunk, trying to see where, or what, the sound came from, and— _what the hell?_

There, maybe a dozen feet away, at the base of a large oak tree, sits Evan. It’s undoubtedly him, hunched over and shaking, a very small and kind of sad shape on the ground. He’s wearing khaki pants, like usual, but his shirt is also khaki, which is a terrible enough decision on its _own_ , how does Evan not know that?

 _Khaki on khaki,_ Jared thinks, shaking his head in disbelief. He thinks about going over to him, but then Evan’s getting up and brushing himself off, and now Jared can see that he has some sort of name tag pinned to the god-awful shirt,and also he’s wearing what looks like hiking boots. Evan waits there for a moment, staring up into the branches, chest heaving, and then he picks something up off the ground and walks off, cradling his left arm to his chest.

His arm, which is not in a cast.

 _What the hell,_ Jared thinks for maybe the tenth time in the past few minutes, and then—

 

-

 

He’s back in the spot he was before, standing still. Looking down at his clothes.

It feels earlier. The sunlight is not as yellow, and it’s somehow even _hotter_ now. He’s already sweating a little.

He walks in the direction of where Evan was before, and finds him quickly. Like he usually does. Like he’s a compass, and North is always pointing to where Evan is. Or some shit like that.

Evan’s just sitting there. He hasn’t walked off. Which, what? Did he come back? 

Jared checks his pockets again. He still doesn’t have his phone. Huge bummer.

Jared gets closer this time, and gets to see the way Evan’s crying like he’s trying to keep quiet, which is dumb, because there’s not even anyone around. Gets to see the distressing, wrong way that Evan’s arm is bent. Jared almost throws up right there in the dirt, for two reasons: one being that Jared has never had any broken bones before, so the sight of that is, well, scary as shit. Reason number two is that he realizes that if they’re in a forest, this must be Ellison State Park, and if Evan’s arm is broken and there’s no cast on it yet—then that means Jared has _gone back in time._ Twice now.

He desperately wishes for his phone to appear, because he’d like to check the date. He is officially going to _lose his shit._

But that’s something he can deal with in a little bit. Right now, he needs to help Evan. He doesn’t know how the fuck he’s going to do that when he’s not even sure how he _got_ here, but. He can’t just not do anything. Swallowing hard, he walks even closer, until he’s directly in front of Evan, who doesn’t even look up at him. He’s staring down at his hands, tears streaming down his cheeks, and there are leaves stuck in his hair.

“Evan,” he says, and gets no answer. Not even a glance. It’s like Jared’s not even there.

Jared wonders if maybe Evan’s having a panic attack, and that’s why he didn’t hear. Except Jared’s witnessed his fair share of Evan’s panic attacks, and this...seems more like the aftermath of one, honestly. Evan isn’t really having any trouble breathing. He’s just crying a lot, quietly.

“Evan,” he says again, crouching down and putting his hand on Evan’s shoulder, and Evan still does not react at all. Does not flinch away or shove his hand off like he usually does, which is extremely concerning. And then Jared realizes something else, jerking backwards as if he’s been burned—it’s not that Evan _doesn’t_ hear him. It’s that he _can’t_ hear him.

Or feel him.

_It’s like Jared’s not even there._

Now he’s freaking out. Really, seriously freaking out. Is he a ghost? Did he _die_ earlier? Was that headache he had really like, a brain aneurysm, and is this some sort of weird After?

Except that’s not right, because why would the afterlife be him reliving probably one of the shittiest days of not even _his_ life, but _Evan’s_? And does it even count as reliving it if he wasn’t there the first time?

He’s probably just stuck in some weird dream. Yeah, this is all just a really fucking weird dream and he’s going to wake up soon. He doesn’t bother pinching himself to try to confirm, because he’s already made up his mind about it.

Evan stands up, brushes dirt off of his pants. Stares up into the tree branches, sniffling. Stoops to pick up something—his phone. Then he walks away.

This time, things go dark, briefly, before Jared is sent back to the park again, like he’s a video game character and someone's restarting the level.

 

-

 

“Are you fucking kidding me,” he says to himself, or to the universe, because fuck the universe for letting him believe for a few pitch-black seconds that he might actually get to wake up now.

It’s somehow even earlier than before. Jared doesn’t know how he knows this, but he just does. He makes his way to Evan’s tree, except Evan isn’t there. For some reason, though, Jared has a feeling that he’s coming. He’s on his way.

He sits down, leaning back against a stump, and waits. A minute passes. Two. Ten. Jared decides that he’s going to give it ten more minutes, and if Evan still doesn’t show, then he’ll let himself freak out again for real. He does not know what the absolute fuck is going on, but he’s going to just continue to wait it out.

Finally, after what feels like forever, he sees the khaki-clad teen walking down the trail towards him. He doesn’t see Jared. His fists are clenched at his sides, and he looks extremely out of it. His face is red. He keeps doing this really annoying thing where he stops in his tracks every few feet, then shakes himself and continues walking.

This must be the before, Jared realizes. Before he climbs the tree.

Evan looks around like he’s lost, almost—to which Jared thinks _me too, bitch, the fuck—_ and then he stops under the oak tree and nods to himself, peering up into the branches in that way Jared has seen him do two times before.

“Evan, don’t,” Jared calls out half-heartedly, even though he knows he’s basically invisible right now. He remembers, suddenly, a children's book series he read when he was little called _No, David!_ It was just about this kid David doing a bunch of stupid shit, and his mom repeatedly telling him, “No, David!” Jared feels a little bit like that mom right now.

Evan takes his phone out of his pocket and sets it on the ground. _God, what a dork,_ Jared thinks as he watches Evan hoist himself up onto the lowest branch. _What an idiot. He doesn’t even know he’s about to fall._

Then he realizes that he’s probably going to _see Evan fall_. Which makes him feel extremely uneasy, but it’s not like he has anywhere else to go or be, so then, as quickly as the thought entered his mind, he’s resigned to the fact that he’s going to have to watch a person fall from over—how high did Evan say it was?—forty feet up.

Evan climbs surprisingly fast. When he’s maybe fifteen feet or so up, he looks down, and his face just crumples, and then he’s crying really hard. “Oh shit, what the hell,” Jared says aloud, standing up abruptly. Evan keeps going despite the sobs wracking his body, and then he’s almost to the top. “What the hell are you _doing,_ dumbass,” Jared mutters, and there’s a tightness in his chest all of a sudden, like someone’s reached in and is grabbing his heart and _squeezing,_ and it _hurts,_ and fuck, if he isn’t dead already then he’s definitely going to die soon because he kind of can’t breathe.

Evan’s looking down again. Jared wants to turn around, or cover his eyes, but he doesn’t move, knowing what’s about to happen. Evan is going to fall. Evan is going to fall and there is nothing Jared can do about it. It’s fine. He tells himself it’s fine. He knows what’s going to happen.

Except that he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know _shit,_ apparently, because then Evan shuffles forward and _lets go of the branch._

Everything seems to slow down. Jared is paralyzed where he stands, and then he’s shouting, “Evan!” but of fucking course it goes unheard, because he’s a goddamn ghost stuck in this time travel Groundhog Day nightmare from hell.

Before Evan even lands on the ground, everything goes dark.

 

-

 

When Jared comes to again, he’s sitting in the dirt, not standing. Weird. When he gets up, he notices that there’s dirt on the toes of his sneakers that definitely wasn't there before, and that kind of makes him want to cry, because does that mean he’s _not_ a ghost after all? He tries to recall any information he might have ever read about ghosts and spirits. Is it possible for a ghost to get dirt stains on his Adidas?

When he makes his way towards the now-familiar oak tree that Evan fell—no, _jumped_ —from—

Shit. He has to stop in his tracks, keeled over, hands braced on his knees, trying to swallow the lump rising in his throat, because he knows the truth now. Evan chose to high dive out of a fucking tree. He did it on purpose.

 _“I was climbing a tree, and I fell,”_ Evan had told him. Like that’s all there was to it.

Swallowing hard, Jared thinks back to the first memory he has of Evan. They’ve known each other since they were in diapers, but the earliest thing he can recall is from the first day of preschool. Jared threw a tantrum upon finding out that Evan was in a separate class. He cried and screamed until they finally gave in and let him switch over to the other teacher. When he walked into the room, Evan smiled at him so wide, showing off his missing front tooth, and practically bounced out of his chair with excitement. They got to sit together as long as they didn’t distract each other or their peers.

They were inseparable for a long time. Heidi liked to joke that Evan followed Jared around like a lost puppy, but honestly, Jared always felt like it was the other way around. He couldn’t stand being away from Evan. Right after Evan’s dad left in second grade and Heidi started taking more shifts at the hospital, he spent a lot of time at the Kleinmans’, and when he got sad about it, Jared was there, hugging him tight and telling him it was going to be okay, telling him, “I don’t have a dad and I’m just fine, see?” and “I have _two_ moms to share with you when yours has to work.” And then Evan sniffled and laughed and nodded, and Jared felt proud of himself for cheering up his friend, and asked him if he would like to play with Jared’s Ninja Turtle action figures, and Evan said he would like that a lot.

Heidi taught Jared how to deal with Evan’s panic attacks. Evan attended the funeral of Jared’s first cat, Piper, and helped him pick out the name for his second. (Or technically, this is how it went: Jared came up with a list of names. Evan told him which ones he thought were the best. Then Jared watched Rent with Liz one night and ended up picking a name that wasn’t even on the list, and then Evan told him that Angel was a great name for a cat.) In fifth grade, when Jared told Evan that his moms were picking out a new house, Evan started crying. Jared just stood there, bewildered, until he realized Evan thought he meant that they were moving _away,_ and then he punched the other boy on the arm and said, “We’re just moving to a different neighborhood, dummy,” and Evan blinked and said, “Oh,” and then they laughed about it until their stomachs hurt.

Middle school is where things started to get complicated and weird. Jared was outgoing and made new friends at camp and theatre classes and Robotics club, while Evan’s anxiety got worse and he began to isolate himself from everyone around him. They started to drift apart. By eighth grade, the only times they hung out was whenever Joan said he needed to invite Evan over or she’d take away his phone, or something along those lines. Other than that, they only saw each other in the few classes they shared. The worst part was that Evan was somehow still Jared’s closest friend. His camp friends didn’t really want anything to do with him after each summer ended, and he always felt like he wasn’t smart enough for the Robotics kids, and the theatre kids said he was _too over-the-top_ for them, which is something he still doesn’t understand—they're  _theatre kids_ for crying out loud—and is kind of bitter about.

Freshman year of high school, they sort of found their way back to each other. Things weren’t the same as they were when they were in elementary school, but that was okay with Jared. As much as he didn’t like to admit it, even to himself, he’d missed Evan, and would settle for even a fraction of the friendship they had before.

One weekend, sophomore year, Evan came over and they studied for a big Spanish test together. Jared wasn’t doing a good job of focusing, because he couldn’t stop glancing over at Evan, who was doing things like tapping his pen against his textbook restlessly and mouthing whatever he was reading, and every now and then his brow would furrow when he got to something that confused him, and Jared realized with a jolt that he had a _crush_ on him. Which wasn’t exactly a problem, he knew already that he was gay, had figured that out in eighth grade, but it _was_ a problem because it was _Evan_ and he had no idea how to handle having feelings for this guy who he’d known since they were babies. This guy who still had baby fat on his face and had an awful stutter and dressed like a cartoon character and was just generally _uncool,_ and besides all that, had a crush on Zoe Murphy.

And so began the deflecting and the sometimes too mean comments and use of the phrase "family friends" and the poorly-timed, poorly-delivered jokes about his car insurance, which wasn’t even a _thing,_ his moms paid for his car insurance regardless of whether or not he hung out with Evan. Jared is many things, and stupid is one of them.

Anyways—Jared pushes his thoughts away, because suppressing his feelings is what he does best. This time, when he walks towards the tree, Evan looks up. He looks up from where he stands, one hand on the trunk like he’s getting ready to climb, and freezes. He’s staring straight at him. “Jared?” He says, voice hoarse. His eyes are red and his face is wet with tears—like it has been the last couple of times Jared’s seen him here. “What are you doing here?”

“You can—” Jared rushes towards him, heart racing, and tries not to be hurt when Evan flinches away. “You can see me?”

“What?” Evan says, brows furrowed. “I—”

Blackness.

 

-

 

“Are you _motherfucking_ kidding me?” Jared yells. His feet are planted on the ground. There are somehow even more dirt stains on his shoes. “This is getting really goddamn fucking old!”

The trees surrounding him have nothing to say to this. Neither does the squirrel sitting on the ground nearby. It doesn’t scurry away at his loud swearing, doesn’t react at all. He steps closer to it, and reaches a hand out. Still nothing. He swings his arm like he’s going to hit it, but the squirrel just looks to the side, calm. Jared is not even there at all.

“Fuck,” he says, with feeling. “Fucking crap.”

He’s really starting to panic. How long is this going to go on? Is he in an alternate universe? Is time stopped until he figures out what it is he has to do? Is everyone in the hallway at school just standing frozen? Or is it like he was sent back in time and everyone in the present—or future, technically?—thinks he's missing? Shit, his moms have probably started sending out search parties, if that's the case.

He's never actually seen Groundhog Day, or any movies like it. He has no fucking clue what he's supposed to do. If only he had his phone, he thinks again. Then he could just Google it. He snorts to himself a little when he imagines what his search history would look like. 

_"groundhog day plot"_

_"time warp"_

_"i think i'm trapped in an alternate reality"_

_"how do i know if i'm a ghost"_

_"time travel????"_

Something in his chest tugs. He follows the feeling to where he knows Evan will be.

The other boy doesn't acknowledge him, but Jared calls out his name a few times anyways, just to check. No response or reaction. He's invisible again. He wonders what exactly happened before. Did he break through the time travel/ghost barrier somehow?

Evan's already so high up in the tree that Jared can only see parts of him through the branches. He's stopped climbing. Jared keeps staring despite the voice in his head screaming at him to look away, turn around, cover his eyes. He keeps watching because he has to be sure of what he saw before.

Nothing changes, no matter how hard Jared wishes for it to be different, for it to not be true. Evan deliberately lets go, and right after that is when Jared turns around, not wanting to see the impact. He hears it, though—the loud thud and simultaneous, sickening crack of a bone breaking, and then a cry of pain. There's a sob, then a sniffle, and then it's quiet, but Jared knows without turning back around that Evan is still crying.

"I don't want to be here," Jared says out loud. He doesn't know what the point of this is. Maybe the universe will hear him and decide that he's had enough. "Please," he pleads. But nothing happens.

Jared knows about Evan's mental health issues. He knows about the anxiety, of course, because it's obvious, and it was such a huge part of Evan's life growing up. He knows about the depression too, kind of, because Evan made some weird comments about it a few times. Jared had just pretended not to hear him or changed the subject, and then didn't think about it later, because if he just pretended it never happened, then he wouldn't have to think about the hurt look on Evan's face. Jared already hates himself enough, thank you very much.

He's doubled over again all of a sudden, gasping for air, because the thought of a world without Evan in it is unbearable. What would he do if he woke up one day to the news that Evan was  _dead_? That he killed himself? Jared falls to his knees in the dirt and braces his palms against the ground, wheezing. Fuck, he feels like he's breathing through a straw with a hole in it. He tries to calm down, remembers how he helped sometimes when they were little and Evan got like this. It's much, much different when you're on the other end of this thing.  _This is it,_ Jared thinks, because he's nothing if not dramatic.  _This is how I die._

But it passes. It takes a long while, but the vice-like grip on his chest finally loosens, and he isn't wheezing or panting anymore. He shifts so he's sitting properly, and rests his head between his knees. He closes his eyes. The top of his head feels incredibly warm, reminding him that the sun is still beating down relentlessly. He wonders if the sweat stains on his shirt will disappear when the universe inevitably resets everything again. When he's sent back here to witness Evan's fall for the fourth or fifth or so time. He's already resigned to it.

When he finally looks up, Evan is gone.

 

-

 

Jared's alarm is going off.

He stares up at his ceiling, wide-eyed, and then he's scrambling out of bed to turn it off and check the date. It's the first day of senior year.  _It's the first day of senior year._

"First day!" Joan says as she walks in, cheerful as ever, and Jared never thought he would be so happy to hear those words. "Oh good, you're already up. I made french toast for breakfast. Come down before it gets cold, okay?"

He nods quickly, still bewildered, and then she's giving him a weird look and moving closer.

"Is that dirt on your cheek?"

His hand flies up to his face. "Uh," is all he manages to get out.

"Take a shower, maybe," she suggests, wrinkling her nose. "You smell kind of like...outside." And then she leaves the room.

He stands there for a good two minutes, not moving. He's not even sure if there are any thoughts going through his head. Maybe there are just so many that his brain is short-circuiting.

He does take a shower, because when he looks at himself in the mirror, there is in fact dirt streaked across his cheekbone. His hands are dirty, too, and he recalls the feeling of digging his fingers into the ground as he tried to catch his breath. It was real. It was not a dream. "Jesus fucking Christ," he says out loud under the hot water, because he  _can._ His moms are downstairs. No one is going to hear him. "Fucking fuck."

When he goes downstairs, everything is exactly the same as it was the first time he experienced this day. Angel follows him on his way to the kitchen and meows loudly until he picks her up. His moms are sitting at the table, eating in comfortable silence. There is a plate of french toast for him in his spot, and a mug of coffee, lukewarm.

He sits down to eat. He's not really hungry, but he feels like he should eat anyway, because that's what he did the first time. Liz is reading emails on her phone, and that reminds him—

He fumbles for his phone and checks Instagram. Sabrina Patel's post about senior year is there at the top of his feed. With slightly shaky hands, he goes to the explore page and types out Evan's username. It takes what feels like forever for his profile to load, but it's all there. All the posts from this summer. Jared sighs, kind of relieved. He's not even sure why exactly he's relieved. He still needs to see Evan in person. Suddenly he can't wait to get to school.

"Ready to go, kiddo?" Liz asks as she stands, grabbing her bag and keys. Jared gives her the same reply, in some weird attempt at normalcy, and then they're at the door and Joan comes over to kiss her, and then he's getting pulled into a hug, and Jared squeezes them both back just as tight.

"Mom," he says when Liz tears up, parked outside the school, and she wipes her eyes and laughs in the  _exact_ same way she did before and says the thing about how after this he's going to be an adult, and he recites, "Don't remind me, please," and gets out of the car. This time he smiles and waves at her as she drives away.

It occurs to him, as he stands outside the entrance, that he could still be trapped in a time warp. Fuck, he should have Googled that shit. How does he know he's not going to wake up tomorrow to his mom saying, "First day! Up and at 'em"? He pulls his phone out of his pocket to check the date again. It is, of course, still the first day of senior year. 7:09 A.M.

He swallows hard as he walks in. He sees Evan immediately, because of course. He's having the strongest feeling of deja vu he's ever experienced in his life. It kind of makes him want to bolt out the doors and go back home. Curl up in his bed with Angel and take a long, well-deserved nap.

He makes his way over too soon. When he gets to Evan's locker, Alana is still there. Still talking. "—Because then, she died," she says, and Jared wants to laugh because what the hell did he just walk into? "Hi," Alana's saying to him suddenly. "Jared, right?"

"That's me," he says, not even trying to come up with something funny.

She smiles at him, then back at Evan, who's still standing there sort of frozen. "Happy first day!" she says, and then whirls around and walks away. And now he's alone with Evan, who he now knows tried to kill himself over the summer. He got to witness the event,  _multiple times._ An excruciating amount of times. His stomach churns just thinking about the way Evan's sobs went unheard in those fucking woods.

So. He knows. But Evan doesn't know that he knows.

"So," Jared says, not quite looking at Evan. "Is it weird to be the first person to break their arm from jerking off too much, or would you consider that an honor?"

Just because he knows the truth now doesn't mean he's going to stop being an asshole, apparently.

Evan steps forward immediately, gesturing wildly. "That's not—I mean I wasn't—I wasn't...doing that."

And then Jared's brain is supplying him with an image of Evan  _doing that._ Fuck. "You—" he starts, then clears his throat awkwardly. "How'd you break it?"

Evan looks down. "I was—okay, um, well. I don't know if you know this, but I worked this summer as an apprentice park ranger?" He glances up, and Jared nods and smiles for him to continue, despite the weird sadness he's feeling all over again. "Um, at Ellison State Park? I'm kind of a tree expert now, uh—"

"Not to brag or anything?"

"Yeah. Um, and so, it's," Evan gives an awkward little laugh. "It's kind of a funny story, actually—"

" _How?_ " Jared says, because he can't stand this. He wants to say  _I was there, nothing about it was funny. You tried to off yourself. You wanted to be dead._

_Do you still want to kill yourself?_

Evan is giving him a strange look. "I mean, I guess it's not..." And then he's staring down at his feet again, rubbing the back of his neck. There's a marker in his hand. Was it there the first time they talked?

Jared sighs heavily. "Can I sign it?" he asks.

"What?" Evan says, head shooting up. His eyes are wide, and Jared hates him for how cute he is.

"Your cast, dude." He points at it, raising his eyebrows.

"Oh! You—really? You don't have to."

Jared sighs again, this time with a slight roll of his eyes. He takes the marker from Evan, trying not to dwell on how their knuckles sort of knock together. Trying to ignore that flutter in his chest. Holding the cast steady, he picks a spot and signs his name, near Evan's thumb. It's small and kind of messy, but it's there. He adds a heart around it, just to be obnoxious. When he gives the marker back, Evan looks like he's trying not to laugh.

"Thanks," he says. His cheeks are kind of red.

"Yeah, whatever," Jared says. It's not enough. "What are friends for?" He adds, forcing a smile.

"Right," Evan says, voice small. "Friends."

God, Jared feels awful. He should have never let Evan believe that they're just family friends. In his attempts to make his crush seem less obvious, he pushed his only real friend away.

The first bell rings, signaling they only have two minutes left to get to homeroom. Evan turns to go, his movements awkward and jerky, and Jared reaches out on an impulse, catching his sleeve. Evan turns his head, eyes so incredibly wide and blue, and Jared takes a tiny step backward and says stupidly, "Do you have your schedule?"

Evan's brow furrows. "My—We get it in homeroom."

"Right," Jared says, nodding. "Forgot. Sorry."

Evan turns to go again. He glances back at Jared, who wants to disappear because he's so goddamn embarrassed. "I could—" he starts, then cuts himself off.

"What?" Jared says. It comes out more hopeful than he'd like.

"Nothing," Evan says, shaking his head fast. "I'm sorry, I'll—I should just go."

Jared raises his eyebrows. "Just spit it out, Evan."

"Um." He breathes in. Jared watches the movement of his chest. "I was gonna say I could send you a picture? Of my schedule. When I get it. But that's dumb. I'm sorry."

"No, you should do that," Jared says, grinning helplessly. "I'll send you mine too."

"O-Okay," Evan says, and then he's smiling back. "I'll do that."

Jared gives him a thumbs up as he finally walks away.

He misses Evan already. Once he thinks this, he has to brace himself against the lockers, because how much would he miss him if he were dead?

Fuck. He's going to fix things. He's going to talk to him soon. Right now, he just has to deal with the first day of senior year.

As he backs away from the lockers, someone slams into his backpack—or he slams into them, he's not really sure. He turns around, and it's Connor fucking Murphy. He's grown out his hair over the summer, and Jared thinks for a brief, alarming moment,  _it looks good on him._

"Goddammit," he mutters as he backs away from him, at the same time Connor says sharply, "Watch it."

Jared rolls his eyes. "Nice hair," he says with a practiced smirk. "Very school shooter chic."

Connor stares at him, eyes narrowed.

"It was a joke." Jared has less than a minute to get to his homeroom, which is on the other end of the school. Why is he still standing here, talking to this asshole?

"Yeah, no, it was funny. I'm laughing, can't you tell," Connor deadpans. He's gripping the strap of his dumb shoulder bag so tight that his knuckles are pale. He takes a somewhat menacing step forward. "Am I not laughing _hard enough_ for you?"

Jared is not scared of him. "Freak," he says under his breath, turning to leave.

"You're the fucking freak," Connor says as he shoves past him, taking off in the opposite direction. He reeks of weed.

Jared breaks into a jog. He doesn't think twice about Connor Murphy, mostly preoccupied with thoughts about Evan, and about getting a tardy to fucking homeroom.

 

**Author's Note:**

> so this is the first part of a time travel series I'm working on. the next part will be from evan's point of view, and the third part will most likely be from connor's.
> 
> also lmao when I was writing the first time travel scene I kept thinking of jared quoting charlie from it's always sunny: "trees???! everywhere trees???? what the hell is this place?!" 
> 
> title from FOOLS by troye sivan
> 
> feedback is greatly appreciated. if u comment, I will cry tears of joy probably
> 
> edit 3/21: tweaked the dialogue at the end between connor and jared. I like it a lot better now


End file.
